T20 World Cup 2022: Surya Kumar Yadav, India’s new SKY-rise

By Indraneel Chakrabarty: Here comes the New upgraded package for Indian Cricket. Surya Kumar Yadav, fondly named SKY by his loving fans. Post Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, it was (and will remain for ages) Sachin Tendulkar. Post Sachin it was MS Dhoni, certain to go down in history as India’s greatest captain. He passed the baton to Kohli. Virat Kohli’s worrisome slump seems to have ended, but while he was re-emerging, from the shadows has risen a truly devastating player – Surya Kumar Yadav.

Just 34 games old, he’s the joint 5th-fastest batter to 1,000 runs in T20Is, backed by an experience of 200+ T20 games. In the version where a batter’s strike rate precedes batting average, he sits atop at No.1 with a SR of 176.81. If one discounts players of Associate Nations, he’s followed by New Zealand’s James Neesham (SR 164.51) among Test-playing nations. With utmost respect, among the biggest guns of Indian batting none come close to matching SKY’s strike rate. Hardik Pandey, the talismanic all-rounder, is seated at a batting SR of 148.49.

It’s not just the strike-rate, but his modus operandi as a batter, which strikes fear into the hearts of opposition bowlers, even as it elevates delirious Indian fans to cloud Cirrus and beyond. Indian fans adopted ABD (AB deVilliers, South Africa), playing for RCB, enthralled by his spectacular 360° style of batting. One can just imagine what it means to have one such among their own.

Scoring 73 on his Mumbai Ranji Trophy debut, the next season he piled up 754 from 9 games, a tally which included a double-century in his 3rd match of the season vs Orissa, followed-up by a century in his 4th match. He rounded-off the domestic season with yet another century, this time in the Duleep Trophy. SKY spent four seasons with KKR, scoring with 684 runs in 60 matches, not exactly forecasting the exploits he was to unfurl playing for Mumbai Indians in the coming years.

11 years post his FC debut, his first international game happened only in 2021. And when it did, the first T20I delivery, from fearsome Engly pacer Jofra Archer, he hooked it for a six. In his first three T20Is, he scored two half-centuries; the following year; he scored 117 off 55 in a game where India fell short in the face of a massive 215 by England.